Corrupted File Detected
by Fey Nikola
Summary: Short one-shot fix-it fic. Sixteen hadn't seemed like a very huggy person. It was an odd choice for the last action of his existence.


Shaun yawned and tried to rub the gritty feeling from the corners of his eyes. Rebecca was finishing a tune-up on the primary heat-sink module, and would take over for him in another ten minutes or so. The desktop gave a quiet ping as Desmond accessed one of the database entries, and Shaun pushed his glasses back into place as he finished an initial file on William Johnson and queued it up for the database.

Bill's footsteps were quiet, but Shaun could hear the echoes as he came over to join them. He'd been spending a lot of time observing the Precursor generator room, or whatever it was supposed to be, and that was probably where he'd come from. Not that there were a lot of places to hide in the cavern, unless one felt like exploring a bottomless hole in the ground.

"That's the second time it's overloaded, isn't it?" Bill asked, and Rebecca grunted as the heat-sink's casing gave a loud snap.

"Yeah," She agreed, hauling it back over next to Shaun. "There's nothing wrong with it, the Animus just keeps going into these crazy high activity cycles whenever Desmond first goes in, and by the time I can switch to the backup this one's nearly burnt out."

"Is it Haytham?"

Rebecca got to her knees and started pulling apart the outer casing. "Dunno."

"Well, perhaps he's trying to sabotage us from beyond the grave." Shaun remarked and jumped as Rebecca practically head butted his knee. He glanced over at Bill and lifted his head a little higher at the look being shot at him. "Only joking."

"I haven't really been able to take a good look since we're still in the middle of setting up." Rebecca explained, and the desk jumped as she shoved her shoulder against the heat sink to pop it into place.

"What do you think it is?" Bill pressed, giving her a hand and helping her to her feet.

Rebecca bit her lip uncertainly and leaned over Shaun, invading his space and taking over the keyboard without even a by-your-leave. Shaun huffed and refused to roll his chair over on principle. She typed in a few quick commands and a white-on-blue text file popped up. Shaun recognized a few of the lines but Rebecca was already scrolling by.

"Here," She stopped and pointed. "It looks like the system is trying to access a file that was backed up previously, but for some reason it can't. There might be a repeating access command somewhere else in here, so the Animus keeps trying to load the file even though…"

She trailed off, her finger no longer pointing at any specific section, and when Shaun looked her eyes were skipping all over the screen.

"Rebecca?" Shaun asked, leaning forward to try and catch her peripheral vision.

"Oh my god." She muttered, scrolling back up to a random point, then back down to where she'd been before. "This is…"

"Rebecca. What is it?" Bill's voice was sharp but his hand was delicate as he laid it on her shoulder. Rebecca jolted like she'd been shocked, looking at the hand, then over at Desmond for some reason.

"Should we shut the Animus off until you can fix it?" Shaun asked cautiously, and Rebecca shook her head as if to clear it.

"No, I think I know how to stop it. I just need to copy it to another drive and I can work on it on the spare system." She smiled quickly at Shaun but it dropped the second she looked back at the text file. "I'll take over for you, go get some shuteye."

Shaun held a yawn back behind his teeth as he relinquished his seat. "Right. Let me know how it goes."

He shared a look with Bill as Rebecca pulled up three different windows and started attaching cords between the primary and secondary terminals. Bill's eyes narrowed, but he sighed and shook his head. It was better to leave her to it, but Bill would keep an eye on her and Desmond. Shaun nodded and headed toward the shining barrier where he'd abandoned his sleeping bag. 

* * *

Sender: 0011000100110110

Subject: 0011000100110111

01000100011001010111001101101101011011110110111001 100100

Shaun's eyebrows furrowed as he stared at the strange email. It had been a while since he'd last needed to use binary for anything, and it took him two false starts and his finger tracing the lines before he got it translated.

Rebecca was nearly nodding off in her seat as Shaun turned around. "Do you know anything about this?"

"'Bout what?" She asked, keeping her voice down since both Desmond and Bill had already fallen asleep for the night.

"Check your mail." He prompted her, then stared when she froze.

In the next second she leaped up and charged over to the secondary terminal Shaun had been using, practically shoving him aside in her haste to see the screen.

"Rebecca!" He started to shout, then remembered the sleeping assassins just beyond the Animus. "What the hell are you doing? That's _my _email, my personal, _private_ email!"

She completely ignored him, a manic grin overtaking her face. "You did it. You crazy bastard, _you did it_!"

"What are you talking about? Why is someone sending emails in binary about Desmond? And stop shouting, you'll wake the others." Shaun waved his hand in front of her face to get her attention, but she was too busy typing a reply, in _his_ _email_, to respond.

"Too late." Shaun nearly had a heart attack as Desmond appeared at his shoulder, looking at Rebecca sending an email composed entirely in binary with bleary eyes. "What's going on?"

"You saved him, Desmond!" Rebecca hissed, pointing to the screen where the original email was showing.

Desmond looked at it for a second, glanced at Shaun with an amused curl to his lips, turned back to Rebecca and shook his head. "I can't read ones and zeros. Who did I save?"

"Sixteen?" Shaun asked, rereading the sender's alias. "Rebecca, you can't mean…"

Desmond twitched.

"The file, Shaun! The one that kept trying to execute? It was trying to run on an older version of the Animus firmware, and once I used a patch I cobbled together on it, it started working properly." She laughed, exhilarated. "And when it started trying to talk to me I thought I'd gone crazy, but it's really him!"

The inbox button lit up then, and Rebecca pounced on the mouse to click it. Another binary email. Shaun didn't even get a chance to start translating before Rebecca was reading it out loud.

"I have to thank Desmond. He needs a guardian angel." She turned around, then started to falter when neither of them seemed enthused. "What should I reply?"

A muscle in Desmond's jaw jumped. "Send: there's no such thing."

Rebecca seemed taken aback, and her fingers hesitated over the keys. "Are you sure?"

"If it's him, he'll know what it means." Desmond confirmed, crossing his arms. Shaun scoffed, looking between the two as Rebecca turned back around to translate and send the reply.

"You can't be taking this seriously." He insisted. He groaned when they both ignored him, waiting for a reply. "Rebecca, how do you know it's not a Trojan virus and you're inviting Abstergo or who knows what in?"

"She knows what she's doing Shaun." Desmond defended, which made Shaun roll his eyes.

"You don't know a pop-up from a worm, you have no idea what-" But his skepticism didn't stop him from cutting himself off when a new message appeared in the inbox. Shaun had enough time to translate 'hah' before Rebecca turned back around again and cut off his line of sight.

"He just laughs for a while, then says 'I was wrong. You get into too much trouble.'"

Desmond stared at her, then backed away and lowered himself into the desk chair. "He's not dead."

Shaun blinked. "Well, technically he's still dead, if it is him. He's just, well… conscious."

"'He' who?" Bill voice cut through their earpieces. Shaun opened his mouth, then looked to Rebecca who seemed frozen.

Desmond slowly lifted his hand to his ear. "Clay. Clay's alive. Rebecca found him." 

* * *

"For the record: this is a terrible idea." Shaun glanced at Desmond as he booted up the Animus' main systems.

"Yup," Desmond agreed as he sat back in the chair. "As ideas go, this one sucks pretty hard."

Rebecca snorted from the other terminal as she triple-checked the connections. "Oh please, sucking hard is awesome."

Shaun choked back a laugh as Bill wrinkled his nose. Desmond nodded thoughtfully and grinned. "'Kay, then this idea bites hard." He corrected.

"Kinky." Rebecca smirked. "We're ready as we'll ever be. Time for you to do your thing, Desmond."

Shaun activated the Animus, putting Desmond under. "Yes, let's hope you know what you're doing. I don't particularly feel like having my eyes stabbed out by a mind-controlled Rebecca."

The Apple gleamed in Desmond's hand. His voice, slightly synthesized, came from the speakers. "So, no pressure then. Here goes."

It was like a whisper of light rippled over Desmond's body, and Shaun couldn't help the flinch he gave. The last time he'd seen light like that, he had to arrange a funeral in Italy. The light didn't spread though; it didn't reach out and freeze him so that he could watch a friend die out of the corner of his eye. Instead it seemed to form a shell around Desmond. It wavered and almost disappeared, but Desmond's hand flexed weakly and the shell of light solidified and sat up.

Colour seeped in as it separated from Desmond, an exact copy of him except for the black hoodie. It stood lifelessly, more manikin than clone. Shaun could hear Rebecca frantically typing, but he doubted it would do any good. At this point it was all on Desmond, the Animus, and the Piece of Eden.

It blinked. Shaun half-stood to see its face better and it blinked again. Its eyes focused on the distant energy barrier, then shifted to the doorway to the generator room, then to him. It blinked again, and Shaun stood up properly as it started scrutinizing him.

Desmond groaned as he disconnected from the Animus and the copy tried to turn its head but lost its balance and stumbled. It caught itself on the desk, which Shaun quickly braced from the other side so it wouldn't slide out from underneath it. Desmond was up, light from the Apple glistening over his hand as he braced his identical twin and helped it stand up straight again.

"Dd-" It grunted, one hand tangled in the front of Desmond's white hoodie. "Dd-ss-n-"

"I got you, man." Desmond reassured it, and it let out a huff of air that was almost a laugh.

"Here, sit him down." Shaun got a hold of himself and lifted the desk chair over the cords in the way. Rebecca came up to the desk, staring unabashedly at the copy. Desmond braced it as it gingerly sat down.

"Welcome back, Clay." Bill said gently. The copy's eyes immediately focussed on him, and a disturbing smile grew on its face. The noise it made was somewhere between a scream and a sob.


End file.
